Coming to Terms
Fifty-two years ago, I landed on this earth. I can imagine the ambiance at home. It must have been before sunrise on a cold December 22 morning; the earth must have had the coldest, the darkest, and the longest night that day. If they had remembered to light a fire for the occasion, my mother must have been lucky. If not, she forced me out of her on a barely warmed up floor of that secluded one-story house at Dhardhare, with inmates comprising our grandparents and younger uncles in addition to parents and siblings.
I wonder what fifty-two was like for our grandfather in 1962. I wonder because fifty-two brings to me a lot of flesh-and-bone frustrations. I did not see Grandpa at fifty-two; it was ten years before I set foot on this planet. But I saw my dad. He must have been as old as I was at thirty-five, so much younger in terms of physical strength and confidence for longevity. He was still cutting down trees and carrying logs. He was lifting heavy sacks of rice and climbing trees to trim their twigs. My body, instead, is the gift of over-qualification, overthinking, and over-confidence in the merits of wisdom.
I think of the past years and realize that the body sustains its own degeneration. You only need to ignore the fallouts. You only must renounce falling too early. If you manage to keep breathing steadily and standing erect, the earth holds you further. Just hope for the certainty of getting up agile tomorrow morning after having fallen asleep tonight. Life, I believe, is about having an eventless slumber, probably dreamless. Dreamless because you get to feel that you depart every night and get back every morning. Life is all about coming back alive.
I was told long ago that physical changes correspond with lifestyle and environment. They said that how my body functions relied heavily on the foods I consumed, the activities I performed, the companies I associated with, and the postures I maintained at work. And I realized all these through practical experience gained through intermittent experiments with the body. Know thy body, listen to it, and act as it dictates. I know this works. I know I can fare well if I adhere to it. Every time I have violated the norms my body has set for me, I have suffered: the flank cramps, the rib pains, and the numbness up and down my right hip spring from food, travel (vehicle rides), and prolonged computer work.
In the given circumstances, I am fancying the kind of life I will have ahead if living with alarms and aches is the post-fifty reality for a man. This reality must have been documented somewhere by some people. I am not sure if I can and will document mine, but I will try to find someone else’s for identification, if not for solace. I just searched “Man’s life after 50” on Google and was faced with an overwhelming number of life experiences. The most identifiable component was the persistence and uneven distribution of fat in the body. Another: gradual compression in the spine and growth of the prostate. But does this casual revelation make my experiences commonplace? Probably. I must allow myself to suffer more to fully come to terms with the post-fifty realities.
Poly-Directional Oxymorons
Times are hectic. I mean, they remain so busy as to drag me into their busyness. Do not get confused; I mean people, not watches. To me, sometimes people look like seconds, even milliseconds, running to make minutes and hours and days and years and decades and jubilees and centuries. Standing at the veranda of my rented flat, I look at the street, at the pedestrians, vehicles, vendors. And these perennial pedestrians come from and go nowhere. The scenario elsewhere is even more bewildering. For example, the thoroughfares of Kathmandu. When I thus get submerged into the infinity around me, I find my own priorities muddled and pushed infinitely into oblivion.
But such absence from the creative sphere is not worrisome to me. The same pursuers of seconds and minutes are educating me intermittently, in the sense of making me aware of my own space in the pursuit. I know my pace is predictable yet complex at the same time. By complex, I mean polysemic, like my own epistemic choices. By polysemic, I mean like my aesthetic orientations. I am more drawn to people who think and question than those who rejoice in the status quo.
The paces are poly-directional. This is the primary challenge for me at present. The official stuffs demand a sort of pig-headed, foolhardy approach. The personal priorities urge a relatively more relaxed and fun-prone adamancy. The familial are for the basic and primitive fulfillments. The academic are intellectually engaging, yet pathological, occasionally causing aches in the ass and pricks in the prostate. How far will these take me, and how long? I end a day with this sense of suspense and begin another with a certitude of uncertainty. Yes, I am turning philosophical every minute, reading the world from my veranda that idealizes the same oxymoron.
Clinical Specimen!
At times, I tend to think very hard about the number of complaints I have about my health. The complaints are cumulative. My stomach very often remains upset for no reason. I think of it in relation to my temptation for tea and coffee. There is a small hole through one of my jaws, which keeps accumulating food particles. My kidneys have tiny stones of 4 mm each, which at times feel like gnawing on the abdominal wall. If they are growing, it must be because of whatever calcium I intake. That’s what I guess, based on my ‘digital literacy’. The blister on my right ankle, which aches at the slightest rub, fills me with mystery, and the pain in the surrounding muscles is an enigma. What of the fatty liver, the TG level, dryness in the eyes, throat allergy, the dark patches on the feet and ankles, the pain in the left elbow, and, above all, the prick on the tailbone and lower back? I am almost turning into one of the most comprehensive clinical specimens for a medical school. When I say this I recall the protagonist in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.
I am functioning, though. I will drag this tall frame as long as these little things do not do any mischief with me. And who is “I” and who is the body (flesh and bones)? I think “I” is the body’s manager who must know what keeps it comfortable. The body is comfortable when I begin to move it out of “I”: with friends and colleagues and hills and mountains and classrooms and movies and all that engages the mind completely.
‘Unconscious Competence’
I hate to write again and again, but my body is so much into my psyche. This means the aches and dizziness and weakness and whatever threatens the hope for longevity go into my waking life. The best part is that the biochemical tests confront my fear of disappearing early enough. The worst part is that the results do not dispel the fear. I often think I live the most retarded moment of my life post-fifty.
But, bravo! My thirst for creativity is intact. My zeal for learning is very young. The sense of remorse that comes with the detachment from books is intense. My hand does not tremble while writing. My eyes do not burn while reading scripts on paper. The thirst for intellectual growth is as pressing as ever. The dislike for being branded under- or non-performer is explicit. My spirit for continuing the routine is the composite of all these unobstructed emotions. Aches and retardation aside, the official and personal times look — or are made to look — as ordinary as the well-wishers expect to see in me.
I have begun to firmly believe in the value of ‘unconscious competence.’ Though I feel at times that the feeling of retardation signals the approach of departure no matter how far from now, the experiences of creative deliberations alarm the impossibility of early exit. I am learning better things every day. I am speaking wiser words when asked to speak. The post-fifty life is the most unpredictable thing to record. I wish I were less hurried to scribble random thoughts but more patient to script sensible abstractions. But I do not know how much I know, and do not bother to self-probe how much I do not know.
[Based on my diary-like scribbles]